The latest round of fighting in the Middle East is only a consequence of the unresolved political crisis which the area has been living through since Israel's resounding victory in the 1967 war, in the course of which the Zionist state seized parts of Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian territory, and evicted thousands of Palestinians.
Since then various peace proposals drawn up by the Big Powers have failed to gain the consent of the protagonists themselves. This 'diplomatic settlement, embodied tirst in the Security Council resolution of 22 November 1967, and then in the State Department's Kogers Plan, foresaw Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories in exchange for Arab recognition of Israel.
ROOT OF PROBLEM But it in no way tackled the root of the problem, the existence of a racist, pro-imperialst power structure, inevitably antagonistic to its Arab environment. The Palestinians, TIMES Priming House Some Listen He# 4D: Tephone: 18293100 Egyptian forces crossing the Suez Canal into Sinai have persistently resisted an imperialist sponsored solution, which could only be achieved at their expenso. The Arah regimes, fearful of the radicalisation which accompanied the rise of the Palestinian resistance movement, did their best to weaken and control the fedayeen, before giving the go-ahead to Hussein's crushing blow in September 1970. But the Palestinians were not the only factor preventing a just and oquitable peace, in reality a consolidation of the reactionary status quo in the Arab East. The Zionist regime in Israel has never had the slightest intention of relinquishing the conquered areas. It has quite shamelessly cstablished arge mumbers of Jewish settlements in the Golan Heights, the Gara Strip, the West Bank region, despite claiming that everything is negotiable if only the Arab regimes would hold direct talks with fract.
LIMITED OFFENSIVE In the period leading up to the outbreak of hostilities. Egypt and Syria were faced with an intransigent Isracli adversary, a United States administration which, for all the talk overall settlement. of the oil crisis was only very slowly beginning to revise its policy of unconditional allegiance to Israel, and a domestic public opinion wich was growing increasingly restless at the inpotent verhiage and broken promises of its rulers, Everything suggests, therefore, that they chose to risk a limited offensive in order to togain some of the occupied territories and obtain a better bargaining position for an the lighting.
But whoever fired the first shot, the responsibility of the war rests squarely with the Zionist rulers. The Arab states, frustrated by Israel's determination to hold on to her territorial gains, were left with no choice but to take up armis; they did this unwillingly. and aware of the fantastic risks involved (the Army being the principal means of social controi in these countries, and the repository of the ruling class's power and privilege).
Sadat and Assad have no intention of overthrowing Zionism, or even of forcing Israel back to the pre-1967 horden. For these bourgeois Arab leaders, limited pains followed by an American imposed ceasefire would constitute a significant political victory Such an outcome is unlikely, as Superman Dayan has announced Israel's intention to 'annihilate" the Arab foroes. Nixon, too, B conscious that an Arah Victory would have incalculably harmful consequences Tor Western interests, and is clearly in favour of a retur to the positions occupied prior to This would mean the definitive annexation of the lands snatched in 1967, and an enotmous strengthening of the chauvinist, militarist, hible-toting Right opposition to the Labour Party Establishment in the coming clections. UTOPIAN SOLUTION The war. whatever its outcome, has also shown up once again the Utopian nature of the Zionist solution to the Tewish problem. The Zionist Stare is an imperialist outpost in the Arab Tust, a 'colon' state and a fortress of conner revolution. Under the lying cover of giving persecuted Jewry a national homeland', it has driven our and evicted hundred; and thousands of Palestinians, and transformed the survivors of Auschwitz, Belsen, and Dachau into frenzied chauvinists. Zionism has created for the Jows a gigantie ghetto in